I was away for an entire weekend and worked for a day getting my kitchen stocked up with produce as I pondered my next writing assignment. It is hard to get back into the everyday routine, after a weekend of fun, but I am here! Shop and cook this week is adapted from one of my Italian favorites, Chicken Fricassee, Cacciatora Style by, Marcella Hazan.

 a chicken thigh smothered in cacciatora sauce

A little bit of food history on the dish for you. Fricassee is and old french word referring to any dish that is browned and then cooked in some sort of stew — chicken, pork, or beef. It is browned and then stewed with vegetables and mixed with stock to create a sauce. It is a primitive style of cooking and has been transformed into modern-day recipes by adding cream (the French) or creating the cacciatora style dish with tomatoes (the Italians). Cacciatora means hunter’s style, referring to either chicken or rabbit cooked with tomato, onion, and other vegetables.  So there are many ways to fricassee chicken, and cacciatora is one of them.

Browning a chicken (fricassee) is a great way to impart flavor on your meat and start the base of a simple sauce . Use this recipe later as a guide to experiment on your own — substitute the vegetables or  use boneless chicken, use a bit of cream with the wine instead of tomatoes. Play around with it.  It is all about understanding how to layer the flavors and this recipe is a great example of that.

There is a bit of prep work for this dish; cutting up all the vegetable and browning the chicken. It’s not terrible, just a little more time than other shop and cooks I have posted. The good news is, it all gets done in one pan. The sauce that accompanies the chicken is amazing. The first time my mother made this dish she followed the recipe to a T, but we were running low on the onion and pepper sauce. You are going to want to smother your chicken with the goods, so I adjusted the recipe for us all to do just that. Happy smothering.

Chicken Fricassee, Cacciatora Style

Adapted from Marcella Hazan

Print off your shopping list and recipe here

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

 3 – 4 pound chicken cut into 8 pieces

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Flour, spread on a plate

Salt

Black pepper

2/3 cup of onion

1 cup white wine

1 sweet red pepper  and 1/2 sweet yellow pepper or vice versa cut julienne style

1 carrot peeled and cut into thin discs

1 stalk of celery sliced thin

2 garlic cloves chopped very fine

3/4 of a can of plum tomatoes chopped coarsely with their juices

Directions: Wash the chicken and be sure to pat dry before coating with flour. This will allow the chicken to brown nicely.  Cut the peppers and onions into thin strips In a pan over med high heat add the vegetable oil. When the pan is hot, coat the chicken pieces in flour and add them to the hot oil skin side down.

 Get all of your vegetable cut and prepared while the chicken is cooking. After the chicken is golden brown on each side, remove the chicken from the pan and add the onions. They will sizzle  immediately so be sure to keep your eye on them and stir them. They will cook for about 7-8 minutes, reaching a deep golden color. Brown bits will be in the pan, leftover from the chicken. You can now add the wine, to the hot pan, scraping the bits up with a wooden spoon. Let the onions and wine simmer for about 45 seconds.

 At this time return the chicken pieces to the pan, everything but the breasts. These cook faster than the other pieces and will be added after about 35 minutes of cooking.

 Dump all of the vegetables, garlic, and tomatoes over the top and add about 1/3 cup of water. Cover the pan and let it simmer for 35 minutes. All of the juices will meld together, the vegetables will wilt, and a beautiful sauce will form.

 After 35 minutes. Add the breasts, pushing them down into the sauce mixture, and let it all cook for 10 more minutes. Grate some fresh parmesan over the top, if you have it, and serve hot!